The Secret Room

Did you know we have a secret room in our house?  

Technically speaking, it's not a secret room so much as a room I don't talk about very much.  It's our third bedroom: the guest room.  It's gone through some major changes since moving in a year and a half ago.  Next to the nursery, it's one of my favorite rooms in the house.

Here's what it looked like when we moved here in November of 2010:

Blah and boring, right?  It's a small room and when we moved in we designated it as the guest room right away.  But I didn't want to just throw a bed in there and call it a day.  I wanted it to be a little retreat - a place where our guests could relax and feel like the space was theirs while staying with us.  I decided to paint it a darker color.  I've fallen in love with "Rainstorm"by Behr.  Seriously, this color is amazing.  Not too dark, but very rich.

Since the color is dark and the room is small, I decided to accent the room with lots of white to open up the space.  I used mostly white bedding, a white dresser, and white curtains (on the outside of the windows to make the window look bigger).  Then I added splashes of bright color to give personality to the space - artwork from Okinawa and fun pillows from Jess.  The wall lamps we had in Florida and I spray painted them with a brushed gold paint.

  Here's the result: a sophisticated, but comfy, guest room.  I'm pleased with how it turned out and it's definitely not boring.

See that artwork?  Got it at Target for $6 on clearance!  And the dresser is from Ikea.  We classed it up by adding a glass top to it.  We had the lamp already.  It's from Crate and Barrel.  The red bench (lower portion of the photo) is something we picked up in Okinawa.

Here's a close-up of the koi artwork above the bed.  The artist is Rachel Dutton of Shade Tree Gallery.  The colors are really vibrant! 

Now, the secret's out...come and visit anytime!